


Birds Flying Away

by Zakodia



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 23:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17590229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zakodia/pseuds/Zakodia
Summary: Over, over, mountain fold, valley fold. He didn’t remember who had taught him.





	Birds Flying Away

Over, over, mountain fold, valley fold. He didn’t remember who had taught him, maybe it was Mako, maybe it was his sister, by now they had all blended together into muscle memory. He admired his work on the desk, it was perfect, like they all were. Such an elegant design emerging from such plain paper. He folded its wings up and tucked it into his coat pocket, he had an important meeting to get to. There had been some made during the war scattered around the lab, made on particularly bad days when a reminder of beauty and peace was needed. When his head got too jumbled to look at any numbers properly, it was all he could do to take a moment to make one, to clear his head.

He started in earnest a week after Newt left. He knew the legend, 1000 birds = 1 wish, and there was only one wish he could want. He had tried to stop him of course, but he knew best what Newt wanted Newt would get and there was only so much he could do. So, he sat down at his desk and started, a ritual, a calling, a eulogy, whatever you wanted to call it he didn’t care. Day after day he did it and the birds started to fly. They took over every surface of the lab, his office, his room. No one dared asked after the first intern had sparked his traditional anger. He felt guilty about that, that he had yelled at her like he used to yell at Newt. He was trying to be nicer now, to make friends, it was probably Newt’s influence, or his lack thereof. By the third year, he had finished his thousand but still no call, no email, no visits. So, he carried on, but now the birds had turned dark where the first had been white. On the night of the fifth year he wiped them all away onto the floor in a fit of anger, it hadn’t worked, it would never work. He sat down at his desk and wept in earnest.  He didn’t mean it, and he carefully went by and picked them up one by one and put them in a box. The box sat under his bed next to another box he dared not open. For the past five years, he had not touched the paper, until today.

* * *

 

Newt opened his eyes, of course he was in the same place he had been all week, in a cell. He didn’t know why he expected something different. But there on the table in front of him was a singular white crane. It all came back to him, watching Hermann at his desk after they’d lost another Jager, trying not to cry as he folded so elegantly, taking the same care as he did with his numbers. And he knew what it meant. Newt was lost but not forgotten, not by Hermann. And this time, Newt cried.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and Kudos are always appreciated! You can find me on Tumblr at loveaintforkeeping.tumblr.com or on Twitter @SaucyKaiju


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